Haitch [Hay-ch] (noun)-- a naturally occurring, tea-drinking, wine-loving, filth-writing, baby-delivering, sweet-talking, reprehensible young woman. Wordsmith. Thing that bites. My husband's eldritch horror.
No big rule list.
You can request anything, and I may judge you for it, but I simply won't write it if I don't like it. If I don't like it, I'll delete the ask and move on-- no offence intended.
Inbox always open. DM me if you like! I'm friendly, I don't bite, and I'll even message back. You lucky bug.
If it's my husband you're looking for, feel free to bother him at @mrhaitch .
If you've sent me an Agony Aunt Asks, I've started to collate the answers in a new Masterlist; they'll be tagged as #Agony Aunt Haitch for filtering purposes☕🌻 and my usual Asks will be under #Pseudowho Answers You
Jujutsu Kaisen Masterlists
Nanami Kento Masterlist, Part One Updated 12th October 2024
Nanami Kento Masterlist, Part Two Updated 12th August 2025
Papamin Masterlist Updated 20th February 2026
Salaryman Nanami Masterlist Updated ???
Higuruma Hiromi Masterlist Updated 5th March 2026
Suguru Geto Masterlist Updated 23rd February 2024
Gojo Satoru Masterlist *coming soon*
Aoi Todo Masterlist Updated 23rd January 2024
Choso Kamo Masterlist Updated 4th April 2024
Multi-fics/Other Characters Updated 21st October 2024
KNY/Demon Slayer Masterlists
Sanemi Shinazugawa Masterlist Updated 13th July 2024
BNHA/My Hero Academia Masterlists
Aizawa Shouta Masterlist Updated 4th August 2024
All Might/Yagi Toshinori Masterlist
Updated 31st July 2024
Bakugou Katsuki Masterlist Updated 26th October 2024
ORIGINAL MASTERLIST LINK, HERE
[dividers by @cafekitsune]
[all banners/edits by @pseudowho unless otherwise indicated, but I am hunting for some artists for credit/thanks/permission, so please DM me if you see any you know!]
Do you selfship? If so then I have to assume it's with Nanami and Higuruma. IF SO, what are your selfship headcanons?
I don't selfship actually, no! But it's not because I have any sort of negative opinions over it, and no shade to anyone who does self ship.
You enjoy yourselves. Live your best lives. Get cute art, etc etc. Writing, for me, is more for love of the craft over the content; I take pleasure from eliciting the emotional response from readers that I've aimed to elicit. I take pleasure in controlling the pacing and narrative and dialogue to tell the story I want.
But, feel free to 'selfship' me with them in the comments. The funnier the better.
so there is ongoing and nonstop infighting in the nana, higu, kusahigu, higunana community. i know youre not a X/twitter girl but it did make me think of the issues you reported ages ago about clique activity and how people treat people online, and i think its proabably the same group. hoping youre not getting any more shit from them! and tips please for being a part of ancommunity like this for the art even if the people are toxic please and thank you xxxxx
I'd like to say I'm surprised, but I can't say I am. While I've long since left that nonsense behind, I'm sorry you feel like you're stuck in the middle of it. First of all: do NOT lose your art! It is yours, and it is wonderful. Nobody can take that away from you.
So, regarding clique activity and the sharing of art online, remember that the value is in your art, and not the 'organised religion' of certain community groups.
You tend to find that in any fandom group, there are some horrid people, and some non-horrid people (the majority), and while you cannot stop the former from acting as they do (and nor should you expend your energy on doing so), you can alter if or how you interact with them, and how you emotionally respond to them.
You also tend to find that these groups share things in common:
- they always have to have a common enemy; if they've expelled one (usually unfairly ostracised) person, they will absolutely move onto the next, because their perception of themselves as the smartest, most bestest and righteous social justice warriors is reliant upon...
- ...always being either the Hero or the Victim in their own story. The sort of superior magnanimity they maintain (the 'above-it-all-ness' over the drama that they, themselves have created, and over people's legitimate emotional response to being bullied) will always make it seem, to the unaware reader, that this group/person must be in the right. In this way, feeling unhappy and outcast is an unwinnable fight. Walk away with your head held high, and continue sharing your art. You will find your people. The horrid ones are always the loudest, and so you will feel convinced that they are the majority, but they're not. Good people are everywhere.
- They are chronically online, even if they portray themselves as these people with such busy important external lives. You do get the impression that the community they have online forms the absolute majority of their human contact. While I'm absolutely not demeaning the importance or value of online interactions or communities (especially for those who are vulnerable, isolated, disabled, neurodivergent, etc.), you do get the impression that for a great many of those who are chronically online, it is their life. They tend to hyperbolise the significance of really quite inconsequential disagreements or differences. There is a lot of drama over, well...nothing. Just people having minor differences of opinion.
- There is a collective desperation to portray a certain image of oneself, even to the extent that the individuals in the group have utterly convinced themselves that they are the way they portray; usually, frankly, due to an inherent self-loathing that they must mask by portraying themselves as 'impressive' or 'influential' somewhere, because they likely don't feel so in real life, and wearing this mask is easier than accepting and working upon your faults.
- Virtue signalling everywhere!
- Much more aggressive insistence that they are a 'safe space', than actually being a safe space. In truth, actually much more fractious forced drama and casual gaslighting instead.
- Lots of people banding together over the pretence of being social justice warriors, and actually just being mean to people, because the individuals within the group have determined that 'mean girling' within a group is preferable to being out of the group. Real social rejection fears, steering the ship.
- And the final thing in common, is that you tend to notice that if there's ever 'drama', they're (strangely enough) always there. Again, they will portray that it's because they're the brave Hero or Victim, exposing people left-right-and-centre, like the brave and noble warriors that they are...except, the truth is, if you are the recurring variable in drama, you've probably got to stop and ask yourself: why is that?
So, my final advice: step back from any toxic community in any way you feel you need. Don't allow yourself to be pulled into giving an opinion on anyone else's drama. Always assess any 'drama'; if that same thing happened between people you were actually in the room with, how would you respond differently? And finally, don't allow yourself to be gaslighted, or to feel that your art isn't worth anything because the rhetoric is being controlled by toxic people.
Okay?
You know what, I've actually come to be quite fond of the phrase 'touch grass'; and not by means of an insult, or an attack. But because, really, taking a step outside of whatever you're in, and taking a breath of fresh air, really does help you to gain some perspective.
So in the most loving way: touch grass! If something feels wrong to you, talk to a trusted friend or someone who is entirely outside of any of the nonsense. Having a fresh perspective will likely get you to the point that I'm at; laughing it off, and in some ways, feeling a vague sort of pity and disgust towards people who make people feel small, for nothing.
I don't really spend any time worrying about this rubbish now, but I'll always provide insight or support to anyone who needs it. I'm sorry you had to reach out like this, but you are very welcome.
I have reminded your husband to say 'i love you' to you, your children and yalls loved ones
NOW
idk i just hope you guys let each know how much you love and cherish each other
Hi!
As a man who constantly makes his wife (me) and his babies feel loved and appreciated and adored, he was actually fairly insulted by this; even if your intentions are good, it's fairly assuming to project any feelings you have regarding men making their wives feel unappreciated, onto him.
I'm told incessantly how loved I am. It's always about my soul, and not my body. It's shown in gestures too; the solidity of always being there, and reliable. He's been through a rough patch lately, and it's taken a lot out of him. He recognises if he's ever let me down, and makes moves to fix it.
He really is an excellent man. Please always assume that to show us practical, emotional, and physical affection, is his baseline.
This isn't me being dearly horribly offended and self-righteous, so don't feel rejected; just a gentle reminder that I'm incredibly fortunate to have what a lot of women look for from a husband.
Our sons aren't fed any toxic masculinity. They have received an early and ongoing education in consent, how to love someone, expressing themselves emotionally, and more. They are hugged and kissed and played with just as much by him, as me.
Thank you for being concerned about us though. Rest assured, we're in good hands, and so is he.
"God, I love them so much," chokes my husband in the kitchen, where we hug surrounded by the noise of 3 fighting boys, 57 fires, screams of agony, the slow beep of a truck reversing and a radio playing in some unknown location in the house.
The ground trembled. Yuuji cried out in surprise, his eyes darting towards the window and Jujutsu High's torii gates, and how they wobbled. Nanami Kento, half-scarred and one-eyed and one-gloved, grumbled, shaking out his newspaper but not looking up.
SQUEAK!
rumblllll. Laughter, laughter, laughter.
"Nanami!" cried Yuuji, gripping the windowsill and leaning out in horror. "Nanami-- what the hell is that-- we've got to go--"
"It's nothing to worry about," grumbled Nanami, turning the page. "It's just Higuruma and Takaba. Again."
"What?!"
SQUEAK!
rumblllllll. A bark, harsh with irritation. A spray of earthdust and rubble, from somewhere beyond the winding path. Another bark. SQUEAK! rumblllll. Laughter, laughter, laughter.
"It's just Higuruma and Takaba," Nanami repeated, as the sorcerers in question burst through the dust; one laughing, and the other in hot pursuit, with a gavel, huge and rubber and colourful and--
...not a gavel.
SQUEAK!
An enormous, squeaky hammer. Red and yellow and garish and loud.
"TAKABA."
Laughter, laughter, laughter.
SQUEAK!
"TAKABA!"
Yuuji laughed into his hand. He cupped them around his mouth, yelling. "Run, Takaba!"
Higuruma Hiromi huffed, and puffed, and heaved the bucket up against his belly. He lifted with his back. Cold water slopped over his shirt, sticking it to his skin and trickling down beneath his boxers and belt. He shivered. He scoffed at the many-toothed creature that loitered behind him.
"Good god, can you-- can you not-- not help a bit?" Hiromi huffed. He tripped over stage rope and abandoned props, through the curtain-swag dark, towards the stage.
Judgeman, armless and silent, hovered along behind him. It must have sensed its dismissal, because by the time Hiromi had reached stage left, it had floated away behind a curtain and not come back.
Hiromi stepped onto the stage; but the stage was already occupied. Hiromi froze. Indignant fury, bitter petulant disappointment, and pearl-clutching affront washed through him.
There was a girl in his bath.
A girl.
A girl in his bath.
"Ah!" called Hiromi, walking faster now with his sloshing bucket, like a father who had caught his child mid-nonsense. You, halfway through sinking into the bath, looked up. "Ah! No, no, no, thank you very much! Not today, thank you!"
"I beg your pardon--"
"That, is my bath!" Hiromi huffed, grunting as he set the bucket down on the lip of the tub. "That is my bath, I think you will find, and I have been filling it for hours--"
"Not a chance, I've been eyeing this up for days, I've brought bubble bath and everything--"
"Well!" Hiromi sniped, pouring the cold water into the bath, and grimacing with grim satisfaction as you squealed. "Well! That's just too bad, isn't it, because it's mine--"
"I'm already in, so it's mine."
A laugh, hysterical and mirthless. "Oh, no, that's not how this works, sweetheart-- out, now-- get out--"
Splashes. Cries of outrage. Oofs. Roars of irritation.
Hiromi's top half was drenched. He scrabbled to haul you out of the bath; and failed. You proved a slippery customer, and slid around in his grasp like a freshly-oiled dolphin.
"For goodness' sa-- keep still!"
"Shan't."
"You fucking child--"
Splashes. Giggles. Huffs of laughter, tongue in cheek and sour.
Eventually, drenched and growling to himself, Hiromi straightened up. You smiled up at him, sitting pretty. He shook off his soaked sleeves. He looked at you, pink with outrage; and, perhaps, something else. Something different.
"Fine," he snapped, petulant again. Though you had at least removed your socks and shoes, he did not, and clambered into the other end of the bath as you preened at him. "Fine. Have it your way. Be quiet. Don't talk to me."
"I've got bath bombs. And wine."
"Now we're talking."
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
"...and so it comes to a point where it's no longer nihilism to say that the world is a cold and unjust place, and that nothing really matters, it's just miserable, hard fact--"
"Very hard to take you seriously when you're covered in bubbles."
The man you now knew as Higuruma Hiromi yanked on your bare foot, tickling it and pulling you towards him as you squealed. It was your turn with the one glass of wine, but he reached over and plucked it from your hand, draining it in one fell swoop.
You watched his Adam's apple bob. You shivered. He noticed. He draped your leg across his chest and shoulder, leaning his cheek into it with a sigh. His smile fell away, his face becoming hangdog and drawn again.
"It is a bit cold, isn't it?" he mumbled into your calf.
Your eyes softened. You sighed, and took a swig straight from the bottle, before leaning over and passing it to Hiromi. "The bath, or the world?"
"Both."
"The bath, yes. The world, I...I can't bring myself to condemn."
"Then you're a foo--"
"And neither can you."
Higuruma stilled. His grip on your leg tightened. You felt every strong fingertip, mapping constellations upon your calf. You continued, softer.
"And that's what makes this so hard. Because you keep waiting for the apathy to come, and it's not coming. However many people you kill, however you try to convince yourself that the Culling Game is 'full of possibilities', it's not coming. The truth remains; you see the human cost of this, and it eats you up inside."
Hiromi did not answer. He stared into some endless place past the curtains, where red and black mixed as one, until you could not tell where one ended and the other began.
"There is joy to be found," you whispered; even in the depths of despair, yourself. "And there will always be the need for someone to fight for the justice required, for joy to be possible. And, you're covered in bubbles, and drinking straight from the bottle, and--"
"--in the bath with a beautiful woman," Hiromi murmured. You fell silent. Heat bloomed in your cheeks; down your breasts, your belly, your thighs, and then upon the inside of your ankle, where his lips and nose did graze. When his lips began a slow, longing press, he paused. His eyes flicked over to you, reading. You did not stop him. His lips finished their press, hot and branding.
"I don't want to keep doing this," he admitted, parting your thighs to slide himself up and between them, into something of an embrace with his chin rested between your breasts. Your heart could have broken, with the shards of soul in his eyes.
"Not...not this," he clarified, gesturing wanly at you as you sniffled out a laugh. "But this. The...the murder. The bloodshed and...and violence. I don't know what I am. What I've become. Just a murderer, covered in-- in--"
"Sadness and bubbles."
"Sadness and bubbles, yes," he huffed, nosing at the spot between your breasts until you arched up into him. You did not need to talk; the consent implied and the touch electric, and his mouth found your collarbones, your neck, your cheeks, your mouth, kissing, groaning as he tasted you and you buried your fingers into his hair.
Still, Hiromi fretted, even as he twitched and groaned and precum spurted to mix with the waterlogged cloth between his legs.
"If-- if I feel this," Hiromi panted, grinding his aching cock at the crest of your thighs until you reached down and released him, to his hiss and bared teeth. "If I feel this, what else will I feel-- fuck--"
"Then feel it," you gasped, shuddering as his mouth closed around your nipple and sucked, tongue swiping, teeth scraping. "Feel it-- and if you start c-crying halfway through, that's fine, no judgement--" A laugh, deep and appreciative. "--that's fine-- kind of hot, honestly--"
Another laugh; this one, thicker. "Shit...alright. Stay with me, at-- at the end. In for a penny--"
His hand, long-fingered and deft, had just slid down towards your pussy, when the theatre door creaked open way up at the top of the stairs. You froze. So did Hiromi. He turned his head slowly, and you felt rage beginning to prickle along his shoulders, unbound, until--
"Er, are you Higuru...uh...erm--"
You could hear the peach-haired boy's blushes from all the way down on the stage. You buried your face into Hiromi's chest, stifling your laughter. Hiromi, still mercurial and high-voltage, was less amused.
"You're interrupting," he toned, low and deadly smooth. You felt the peach-haired boy tense. You cut it before it built.
"Hey," you whispered to Hiromi. "He's just a boy. Give him a chance."
Hiromi nosed at your ear, huffing a little. He stilled, and thought, then spoke up, barking up to the boy.
"Give me twenty minutes. Then come back. And I'll give you anything you want."
The boy froze. He looked baffled; sweetly so, as if it should be so easy. "Oh, uh...really?"
"Yes."
The boy scarpered. You turned back to Hiromi, and bit your lip. Hiromi grumbled, and reached down, and covered your hand that grasped his cock with his own, stroking himself with your grasp once, twice, three times, until he thickened and twitched and moaned.
"Right," he groaned, his fingers sliding down to press inside your pussy, readying you as you readied him. "Where were we?"
How long had it been since Higuruma last had a woman? He couldn’t remember. His days as a defense attorney had been filled with never-ending work: gathering evidence, building cases, courtrooms and disappointment. He’d barely had any time for himself, let alone a girlfriend. Love, and even sex, required a certain mindset that Higuruma just couldn’t muster up, not when his mind was constantly weighed down by the faces of the people he’d been unable to help.
The ones he couldn’t save.
But now, soaking in a tub with the ends of his hair curling from the damp heat, Higuruma says your name aloud — testing the shape of it in his mouth, teeth and tongue working each syllable and finding it pleasantly malleable, the sound of it echoing off the tiled walls to soothe his ears in a way he hadn’t quite anticipated.
And he wonders what it would feel like to have you join him — here, in this bath. Wonders about the shape of you, bared and hot and slick under water, the weight of your body above him, skin to skin and nothing in between...
Warnings: MDNI (18+/adults only please)! Spoilers (manga & anime - some lines are direct quotes), allusions to depression and suicidal thoughts, brief mentions of exhibitionism, oral & vaginal sex, jealousy
Word Count: ~3.7K words
“I’m already someone who can’t look you in the eye.”
Higuruma had told Yuji that exactly six months ago today, sitting by himself on concrete steps when the pink-haired boy — because that was what he was, really; a teenager who had been made to carry far too much for shoulders that young — approached him and asked, very sincerely, whether he had a death wish.
For volunteering to fight Sukuna.
It would’ve been deserved, Higuruma had thought then, to die in that fight. Still thinks, though that line of thinking is very gradually declining in frequency. Higuruma Hiromi had killed. Taken the lives of others, mostly other sorcerers in the name of self-defence during the culling games, but the judge and prosecutor who had borne the brunt of his violence when his cursed powers first awoken took up a majority of his guilt.
The tension pulled too taunt when the string finally snapped somewhere in his soul.
When Higuruma’s hands found the gavel in that courtroom on that fated day, something dark and sinister and enormous compelling him to slam it down over and over again on the sounding block until all the accumulated discontent slid out from deep inside him to blot out the light, like a theatre when a movie is about to start.
Showtime.
Because wasn’t that all that the courtroom was? A piece of theatre? Everyone in it a prop or actor reciting lines in a story that had already been written before anyone had even stepped foot in the room to hear the case?
Japan’s criminal justice system has a conviction rate of 99.9%.
“It’s always gone against my nature to leave things alone when I feel like they’re wrong.”
“I just never managed to fix this habit.”
Wrong.
Higuruma was wrong.
He felt this deep within him with all the conviction he had channeled whenever he sought to defend people he truly believed innocent of the crimes they’d been charged with. He, a lawyer possessing knowledge of the laws that were meant to uphold society, had blood on his hands, because what was the point when the law never actually protected the people they were put in place to protect?
The system, in which he had placed so much faith when he was younger and much more naïve, had failed. Failed his clients. Failed him.
He had killed the judge and prosecutor in the case where his client, who had previously been found innocent of murder charges, was convicted during a retrial in which no new evidence had been brought forth.
Higuruma was a murderer. And, he would argue still, they had deserved it. His specific brand of guilt was not rooted in the deaths of two supposed innocents. Rather, it stemmed from the fact that, as someone who had very blatantly committed a crime, he would not be held accountable for it.
So now he was a man lost.
He knew the top brass had put in a pardon for him, had chosen not to prosecute him for his misdeeds. Higuruma was too valuable now to them as a jujutsu sorcerer, someone with the intelligence and innate talent to rival even Gojo Satoru himself. An asset who had essentially become untouchable.
Above the law.
It was laughable. The greatest irony of all.
So he had plucked the sunflower pin from his lapel, the one that had taken him years to earn the right to wear as an attorney, and placed it in the palm of his former colleague after she had declared her intent to continue prosecuting him on behalf of his victims’ families.
“Return this for me. And I hope you make a better attorney than I did.”
“Higuruma? Like sunflowers? What a great name!”
Tuesday, March 3, 20XX. 9:13 am.
The first time Higuruma Hiromi met you.
Briefing room with Ijichi sitting to your left and Ino on your right.
He has never seen a smile that bright before.
Bright enough to be incongruous with the world of jujutsu; with the world itself, as Higuruma knew it.
There was something in it that reminded him of Itadori Yuji, and he felt one corner of his lips lift a fraction in response — the feeling like the return of something so faraway it had almost been forgotten.
He had caught the rise of Ijichi’s brows before the man quickly schooled his features into one of stoic professionalism, handing out printouts from the folder that lay open on the table before him, coordinating details of the mission Higuruma had been assigned along with the other two sorcerers in the room.
Ino he had worked with a few times before, found the young man easy enough to get along with. He was always enthusiastic, often talking about Nanami Kento, a senpai he had looked up to and still held in great regard even after the man had been killed in action.
“You know, you kinda remind me of him sometimes, Higuruma-san. I think the two of you would’ve gotten along really well.”
Understanding the enormity of that comment, Higuruma had responded with a solemn nod.
But you…
You were a new factor. A different variable.
Someone who, like him, had found yourself with newly-awakened powers during the culling games. A woman who had inadvertently stumbled upon Hakari Kinji and willingly offered up a portion of your points when you learned what it was they were trying to achieve. In return, the remaining members of Jujutsu High had sought you out after the dust of Sukuna had settled and strongly encouraged you to continue on as a jujutsu sorcerer.
“I couldn’t really say no to Panda. I mean, have you seen him? He’s just too cute! I guess that’s why they brought him along when they asked me. Devious move.” You tapped a finger to your temple as you sat in the backseat with Higuruma, Ino riding shotgun beside Ijichi as the bespectacled man chauffeured the three of you to the mission site. “What about you, Higuruma-san? What they’d bribe you with to stay in this crazy jujutsu world?”
He had paused then, suddenly conscious of his words in a way that wasn’t entirely tied to the reasons for self-flagellation he’d been committing for months now.
He thought back to when the culling games first started, the country suddenly thrown into violent and bloody disarray; a veritable Battle Royale of kill or be killed. He should’ve been horrified. Any normal human being would’ve been.
But Higuruma Hiromi had long since stopped being normal.
Because finally, finally, here was a system that worked. A system that was honest in a way that the scaffolding meant to uphold the law wasn’t. A system truly impartial to anything but objective evidence: that the strongest survive.
“Have you ever killed someone who ticked you off?” he had asked Yuji back when the boy first barged into the theatre, requesting that Higuruma relinquish his points to him. “It feels much better than I expected.”
He thought about this then, sitting in the backseat of the moving car, sensing the patience radiating from you as well as something more shadowed lying in wait beneath the brightness of your words.
“I didn’t really have a choice,” Higuruma finally replied, gaze finding his hands on his lap.
The pardon from the top brass. Their intention on recouping whatever loss they’d incurred by his actions in the courtroom that day by working him to the bone as a jujutsu sorcerer.
Then he looked up, just in time for your eyes to lock with his for a moment longer than necessary. You nodded and didn’t say anything more, which he appreciated, given the audience in the close confines of the car. But then your smile grew into something warmer, sympathetic — private in the way that a secret passes between two people who understand exactly what wasn’t being said because both had lived through their own versions of darkness.
He discovered that he envied you then. The way you could still smile. The humanity that still clung to your aura like warmth nestled in the fibres of a wool coat.
And before he could think any further on it,
“We’re here!”
Ino’s announcement — completely unnecessary given that Ijichi was clearly in the process of parking the black sedan — sliced through the moment. Higuruma quietly spooled back the thread of thought, tucking it away to be re-examined at a more convenient time and place.
Wednesday, March 4, 20XX. 10:25 pm.
“Ahh.”
Higuruma let out a quiet sound of content as he stepped into the tub. He’d deliberately drawn a warmer bath that night, and as he sank into the water, steam rose up in a cloud of humidity to temporarily obscure his view of the tiled walls. As the heat began to penetrate his stiff muscles, he closed his eyes and tried to quiet his mind, but to no avail.
He thought about the mission, about meeting you for the first time the day prior. Recalled how composed you had been throughout it all, coordinating seamlessly with both Ino and himself to exorcise a slew of curses in the abandoned hospital in Sendai. Remembered how his mouth had fallen open a fraction to witness your cursed technique in action; the sheer power and devastating precision of it all, which had undoubtedly given you a massive advantage during the culling games.
Higuruma finds it somewhat problematic, the way his thoughts keep tracking to you. And if he were a less honest man, he would tell himself that it was due to sheer novelty; the fact that you had only just entered his professional orbit. Because this was what it was, after all, wasn’t it? He had been impressed with your skill, your efficiency. With the way you had delivered your report during the debriefing at Jujutsu High, words polished and intelligence glaringly obvious even at 7:30 in the morning.
Cupping his hands, he scoops up warm water and splashes it over his face, as if the act could bring clarity.
Because at the end of the day, Higuruma was an honest man. And right now, he found himself honestly curious about what your life had been like prior to the culling games: what you had done for a living, what you had studied in school. Whether you’d had a boyfriend or a husband, or maybe even a family of your own. He honestly tried to reconcile how someone so clearly capable of destruction as yourself could also be so…
…so beautiful.
It was ridiculous, he knew. One could never judge hearts by appearances alone. He himself was the perfect example of this. And yet, Higuruma found that far from being put off by your lethality, he was drawn to it — the image of your smiling face overlapping with the gruesome way you’d dispatched the curses doing something to Higuruma that he hadn’t felt in so long, it took him a while to name it:
Attraction.
Higuruma Hiromi was attracted to you.
How long had it been since he had last had a woman? He couldn’t remember. His days as a defense attorney had been filled with never-ending work: gathering evidence, building cases, courtrooms and disappointment. He’d barely had any time for himself, let alone a girlfriend. Love, and even sex, required a certain mindset that Higuruma just couldn’t muster up, not when his mind was constantly weighed down by the faces of the people he’d been unable to help.
The ones he couldn’t save.
But now, soaking in a tub with the ends of his hair curling from the damp heat, Higuruma says your name aloud — testing the shape of it in his mouth, teeth and tongue working each syllable and finding it pleasantly malleable, the sound of it echoing off the tiled walls to soothe his ears in a way he hadn’t quite anticipated.
And he wonders what it would feel like to have you join him — here, in this bath. Wonders about the shape of you, bared and hot and slick under water, the weight of your body above him, skin to skin and nothing in between. In his mind’s eye, he is drawing you with the same meticulous care that he brought to his legal work, Higuruma’s considerable skills of observation automatic and working overtime even as he fought alongside you on the mission, subconscious filing away the curves that were only partially hinted at beneath your dark navy uniform.
He thinks about wrapping his arms around you, this spectre of his imagination. Thinks about where he would touch first: the rounded joints of your shoulders, the hollows just above the collarbone where hot water would pool. Or perhaps the gentle swell of your breasts, pliant as he kneads from their soft sides towards the middle, just so he could watch them heave beneath his fingers — pinching and teasing at your nipples to test how hard they would grow at his touch.
Hard, like the way Higuruma currently finds himself beneath the water.
“Hmm.”
Sighing, he sets about traversing your body in his head, large hand reaching down until those long, tapered fingers are curling around his considerable girth to languidly stroke once, twice — mouth falling open wider as he inhales deeply at the contact, at the sensation of his palm reacquainting itself with his cock. And as he begins to build up to the pocket of a rhythm that makes him grow longer and thicker and harder, he wonders what you would do to him if you’d have him, whether that ruthlessness you’d displayed in the field would translate into something just as violent and necessary to completely unravel him behind closed doors.
Or not.
Because Higuruma Hiromi was not beyond taking you wherever and whenever you’d tell him to. And he knows this. Knows without a doubt that if you’d directed him to lay you out on the hood of a car and sink his face between your legs in broad daylight, he would do it, no hesitation. Even if Ino were there and Ijichi had still been buckled in the front seat, helpless behind the wheel.
“Shit—"
His breath catches as his hand picks up the pace, water sloshing over the sides of the tub when his body suddenly jerks upwards, undone by the mental image. He wonders what you would say to witness how quickly he’d kneel, perhaps chiding how careless he was to tear his dress pants on the sharp dig of the gravel beneath his knees. He would take it all in stride, anything to continue tasting you on his tongue, burying his face, his nose, deeper and deeper into your pussy just to drink you in, drunk on your juices.
And he would smile to feel the forceful pull of your fingers in his hair, driving him further into your body as if intent on swallowing him whole between the clench of your thighs. Would pant out how far gone he was for your flavour in between each deep dive — lips and tongue making a veritable mess of his face and your cunt, spit and arousal shiny on flesh that trembled in just the right way to make him your prisoner, Higuruma unable to do much else but press kiss after kiss to your slit, until you’re boneless and begging him to fuck you.
And god, how he wanted to fuck you.
To see you try to smile with all sincerity even with his cock in your mouth, the pink corners of your lips straining to contain him when he was hard and full, throbbing over the slippery surface of your wet tongue. He wondered if you’d look up at him with that same sweetness in your gaze as when you’d made that offbeat comment about his name and sunflowers, how you’d react when that voice in his head would inevitably grow louder, urging him to thrust farther and faster towards the back of your throat — how much more beautiful your eyes would appear when they began watering with the effort of taking him in.
Head falling back on the lip of the tub, Higuruma picks up his pace on instinct, squeezing hard around his cock, vaguely aware of the increasing intensity of the throbbing that pulses in the veins that snake along his length, ensuring that each pass of his hand teased at the sensitive spot just beneath the swell of his swollen head until the effect was enough to make his jaw clench, pressure building through his abdomen.
He thought of the way Ino had looked at you during the mission — the man’s expression filled with an awe that Higuruma was sure had mirrored his own when they saw you fight. Ino’s cheeks had been visibly pink when he finally lifted his face mask at the mission’s end, sidling up beside Higuruma to whisper, “Incredible, isn’t she?” as if Higuruma didn’t have eyes of his own.
Yes, you were incredible. Are incredible. And Higuruma Hiromi wanted you all to himself.
He could admit this now to himself in the privacy of this moment with nothing but water and steam around, stepping back to examine his feelings with all the rigour he usually reserved for court cases. It was ridiculous, he knew, to be jealous of Ino; to have been silently irked whenever you laughed at a joke the younger man made on the ride back to headquarters. Even more outlandish to have felt that tightness in his chest to see Ijichi smile when you had thanked him for taking care of the post-mission documentation.
Have I always been this jealous?
Higuruma could count the number of girlfriends he had had on one hand. And with each, he had, unfailingly, treated them with decency and respect, as should be expected. He had never been the type to feel the sting of insecurity whenever he witnessed them smiling or laughing in the presence of other men. Didn’t get angry, didn’t feel annoyed. He was self-possessed in a way that his friends and colleagues didn’t understand, slapping him on the back with a chuckle as they made some comment about how they wished they could do the same.
People couldn’t be owned. And to desire this was, in his mind, no different from wanting a puppet or a toy.
And yet.
Higuruma had known you for less than 48 hours. There was simply no rhyme or reason for him to feel so…so…
…possessive.
In nearly every other aspect of his life, Higuruma Hiromi had always been a measured man…
…until he’d gone off the rails after hitting his mid-thirties.
And perhaps it is the remnants of this breakdown that is the source of these thoughts, the ones that are spurring his cock to jump and twitch within his grip, precum spilling from his tip to immediately dissipate into the bathwater. Because Higuruma knows that he would relish the chance to fuck you before an audience, to drive the full, hard, hot length of him into you over and over again until his name is being torn from your throat in a clear reminder to all of exactly who was capable of reducing you to this debauchery, that a woman like you would only choose a man like him.
Yes, he would make it known.
Would throw your legs high over his shoulders just so he could bend over and fold you close, lips sealing tight upon yours to steal every breathless whimper that escapes every time his hips snap against your backside, the particular geometry of your body sheathing his cock like your pussy never meant to let it go. The pursuit of pleasure would be shameless; every tensed muscle, every wet sound, amplified in the lewd knowledge that they could watch but never touch.
Not you.
Not the way he could.
And when you come apart around him — wet heat squeezing in tight pulses, hands clinging to Higuruma like he is the only solid ground in a tilting world — he would follow suit, stilling the blistering rhythm of his lovemaking just for a fraction of a moment before he, too, arrives, spilling deep into your greedy body, your cunt begging for every last drop as each subsequent spasm milks him of all he had.
He would give it to you gladly, every last drop—
“Fuck—!”
The word escapes in a hiss, barely formed when he finally comes, the cloudy haze of cum spilling from him in spurts that dilute in the bath water as if it were never there at all.
Like you were never here with him.
Inhaling on a trembling breath, Higuruma strokes himself a few more times, pressure precisely applied to ease the rest of his cum out. And as he does so, he allows himself one final image: his seed slowly leaking from between your folds, delicately swollen from the attention he’d lavished upon you with fingers, lips, tongue; the rhythm of him moving inside you to draw forth something that bordered on overwhelming — the specific alchemy of his body in the crucible of yours.
Higuruma sat for a few moments longer, water now lukewarm. He unplugged the drain. Washed himself again and let the water from the shower head beat upon his face.
Clarity, he thinks. Clarity is what he needs most when he sees you next.
So he could look you in the eye as a colleague, as a professional.
Not the man who had brought himself to ecstasy on thoughts of you after having spent just a handful of hours in your presence.
So that the next time you say his name and “sunflowers” in the same breath, smiling like you were made of light, he could tell you,
Yes.
The seeds are being planted.
The garden is being tended to.
One flower at a time.
I’m learning. Rebuilding.
And when the flowers finally bloom, when he’s finally done the work and earned the right, Higuruma will hand you a bouquet of sunflowers and say,
“I was wrong. But every day feels a little more right.”
“So please, smile like that for me again.”
Thank you so much for reading and hope you enjoyed this piece! Please stay tuned for more writing to come and check out the masterpost! 😊💕
"Midnight Sun" is copyright 2026 Kintsukoi, all rights reserved. Please do not repost/modify/translate/plagiarize in any manner or on any platform.
In the fractured mind of Higuruma Hiromi, you're a cold-blooded killer. You deserve to be tried for your crimes and executed in the Culling Games. But what if the judge, jury and executioner is hunting you down himself? And what if he's entirely wrong?
When you're hunted by a spectre in black, and he finally catches up to you, things go horribly wrong when an unusual Curse imbues you both with an itch that must be scratched; but you were supposed to kill monsters, not make love to them in the dark.
Warnings: Sex Pollen and Dark!Higuruma (fresh breakdown state, start of Culling Games), predator/prey, hints of dubcon (not fulfilled) in nightmare sequence, happy ending.
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You were going to die.
Red stained the edges of your vision. You could not hear past your own screaming breaths and the blood roaring in your ears. Your fear tasted metallic; lactic copperpots along the sides of your tongue, and you flipped onto your belly, gravelscrabbling on cold wet tarmac, ripping, tearing at your stinging palms, and knees, and belly, and--
You screamed and sobbed as a strong hand grasped your ankle, and dragged you back with a roar. Terror was a cold blanket. His body crushed you down, lean and long and deceptively heavy, a black shroud, a stitched canvas in which to be sewn before you sank--
"Have you noticed--" the Spectre spat, flipping you back over, chest to chest, so the rain could drown you from above, "have you noticed-- snakes crawl away on their bellies too, and that's all you are; a snake, just as guilty--"
"Please-- please-- I keep telling you, I haven't killed anyone--"
"--just as guilty as the rest of the scum in this place!"
He roared. He drew back his weapon-- a rainslick, glossy gavel-- with an executioner's gait, and you screamed--
You evaded it. You did not know how, but the Spectre cursed, his gavel slamming down into the space where your body once was. It was an otherworldly thing, the gavel. Whether it hit stone, or glass, or flesh, it always made the same sound; wood on wood, a piercing TOK! like the final tick of one's earthly clock.
It made your blood run cold. His gaze tracked up, and up, until it was fixed upon you; crouched, with his lips peeled back over his teeth and his face twisted with rage, like a gargoyle above a cathedral. You paled. You skittered back on your haunches.
You knew nothing of the strange powers you held, now, but when all they seemed fit for was evasion, you understood that you'd be running from death forever, for you were certainly unable to defeat him. He undertook with malicious certainty of right and of purpose.
You scrabbled again. He roared again. His hand closed around your ankle again.
You were going to die.
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When Hiromi first saw you, days before, he had blood on his face, and soil on his shoes, and the leafcrush gore of a pot plant beneath his feet.
He stepped towards you, over a body. His feet crunched on glass. His hair was wild, and his dark eyes, too, and his tie was loose, and his shirt-tails, too, and you had no right to look as frightened as you did, backing up like a newborn foal; not when you were in the right place at the right time.
“You’re next in the queue, I assume?” he sighed, flat upon the surface but roaring beneath.
You did not answer him, at first; the pretence of grasping for words but failing, he was sure. An act. A ploy. He had seen it all before. He did not falter in his approach. Wind blew in through the shattered windows; so high up, so far to fall. For him, at least.
Hiromi stepped ever closer; each step slow and deliberate. "Come along, then. I haven't got all day.”
“N-no– no–”
“Don’t stutter.”
“Ple– p-pleas– I haven't done anythi--”
“Don’t– STUTTER!” he bellowed, swinging at you with such ferocity that he heard the air crack in his gavel’s wake. It did not meet its mark. You disappeared with a squeal…and reappeared twenty feet away, with your hands over your eyes and your breath coming in gasps.
Hiromi looked baffled, then insulted; then, disgusted. He straightened up. His steps quickened. When he came for you again, it was at a run.
You ran, too. Hiromi snarled. His hands snatched, and caught you by the hair, then the waist, then grappling; anything to hold you still as you flickered in and out of his grasp by some curious means that you pretended to not understand.
Eventually, he caught you, and threw you down onto your belly with little ceremony and even less kindness. Your face ground into the rough office carpet; your arms wrenched behind your back, pinned in his grasp, and he grunted as he straddled you from above, his thighs clamped on either side of your waist. He panted. You felt a bead of his sweat drop to the back of your neck, and you shuddered, your body alight with chilly heat.
Hiromi broke your cry of terror in half, when his other hand tangled into your hair, and arched you back so he could hiss in your ear.
"You're the sort that gets away with it; plays the fool, while someone else pays the price. You make me sick. This game is your comeuppance. I am your comeuppance. So if you can't have shame in life, have some dignity in death. It's the least you could do for yourself."
He smelled so faintly of cologne; of tangy blood and unwashed man. His nose and breath grazed your neck, and the way it peaked your breasts and clamped your thighs was far beyond your control. He was mad. Entirely mad; but the surety of his conviction had you doubting even yourself.
He took a deep breath above you, before growling into your hair.
"Domain expans--"
CRACK!
Hiromi froze with disbelief. Panting, and seething, he looked at the spot beneath him. The spot where you once were. He had you; he just had you. And like a worm, you had wriggled out of his grasp again.
You heard his bellow of outrage, and the TOK! of his gavel from your place halfway down the stairwell, where you had reappeared without your conscious choice. The sound rattled down and down, growing closer and closer, getting louder and louder, cracking the steps even as you stumbled down them, chased to earth by hairline cracks--
Tok-tok-tok-tok-tok-tok-tok-TOK-TOK-TOK--
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Days passed after the first encounter, and the many that followed, and still, you heard it in your dreams. Tok. It haunted you. You woke every night with one hand held out towards death, who held his carriage door open for you, and the other hand muffling your screams at the source.
You had asked for none of this, you thought, toying tok! toying with the slim-pickings you had scavenged from an overturned vending machine. The crisps turned to ashes in your mouth. You ate for functionality; the urge to survive, at least, TOK! at least, still strong.
The street was quiet, and narrow, with little tall walls and abandoned partitioned bins and family homes; now, all either empty, or coffins for single-point prizes. You sat behind TOK! behind a street lamp and outside of its light-- outside of any light at all-- and drew sweet patterns in the dust.
You thought of him; the Spectre. The man in black with the sunflower pin. A lawyer, you surmised; and a vindictive one, it seemed, with a chip upon his shoulder deep enough to notch his oversized TOK! oversized gavel into. It was difficult to ponder upon his vendetta against you, when the terror clouded your judgement.
You pictured him above you, just a few days before; a few near TOK! near misses ago. Though he had looked at you with venom then just as he had every time since, there was something else behind his eyes, too. Disgust, yes; but not for you. The crinkled nose bridge of one who felt the TOK! the knifeblade himself. Something unwelcome TOK! unwelcome rushed through you; heat at the memory of his body, such intimacy in danger. The rush of nausea TOK! nausea that came straight after did not escape you.
TOK!
Washed from your reverie with a bucket of ice water, you stilled at the sound of rustling nearby. It was happening again, you were sure. He'd found you again, with his keen eyes and grim purpose, and you could not keep running, your chest tight already and your legs shaking already and--
A tanuki, small and scrappy, rustled out from behind the bins. It padded forwards on its little clawed paws, led first by its nose to your overturned bag of crisps, before its eyes caught up and it skittered back from the crisps' owner. You stayed still, holding your breath. It's beady little eyes shone in the dark. You knelt, slowly, slowly, keeping your eyes on the tanuki...and tossed it a crisp.
The tanuki froze, then considered, then snatched the crisp in its little paws. It ate as though it was starving. You felt a pang of pity, and pushed the whole bag towards the tanuki with a whisper.
"Here you go," you said, looking down the dim street before walking away. "I don't like them anyway."
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By the time Hiromi stepped into the shadow of the streetlight, you were gone. He'd had a chance, and scuppered it by watching you, instead. He did not know why he wasn't standing over your body, instead.
Perhaps it was the crisp crumbs, left by grateful little claws; or the packet placed so conscientiously in the bin after, even amongst the rubble and ruin. He toed at the dust with the top of his scuffed shoe, and something unwelcome rose fast, too fast, towards the numb surface, trapped behind glass but threatening to break through; perhaps it was the hearts and swirls you had drawn in the dust. Perhaps you weren't scum after all, perhaps you were--
--a con artist.
Hiromi scowled. Harsh, and unforgiving, he scuffed out the drawings in the dust with his shoe. He looked down the street. He could no longer see you in the distance. Something twisted in his belly.
The others had died because they sought him out. He hunted you because you deserved it; no more, no less. You were guilty. You would not be here if you weren't.
He did not hunt you down because you pounded at the glass, cracking it. He did not. Could not. Could not--
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You could not stop watching; for horror was little more than dreadful fascination.
You had not witnessed any of your Spectre's murders, before; but when you finally did, you froze in state, grimly enraptured by the intimacy of such an act. You had hidden within the tall, many-seated hall of an old cinema, and chanced upon him before he could chance upon you.
From the blood on the seats and the way pictureless light still shone down from the hidden projector onto the screen, you surmised that whoever your Spectre was beating to death was no innocent man, himself.
You saw only shadows, for the Spectre had chased the man behind the screen. The man had not stood a chance, and you watched as the Spectre ensnared him in Court; a puppet theatre of justice, performed in real-time.
The man begged, and cried, and cursed. He had neither the capacity nor the mind to defend himself. You did not know how the Spectre did it, but mere moments after the charges were read, and the sentence was served, his terrible hammer fell down in its first skullcave TOK!
The cries silenced immediately. You heard the Spectre roar into the second swing, dropping to one knee before the corpse, panting. You could see no gore, but for that in the theatre of your mind's eye.
You watched the Spectre with an uncanny desire to know; to understand. He did not kill indiscriminately. You had seen him direct the innocent-- unlucky civilians, or hungry abandoned dogs-- to safety and shelter. He was flat, and cold, yes; but not indiscriminately cruel. So why you? Why did he hunt you?
The projector began to whirrrrr far above you, its focus shifting as it ran out of power. The Spectre still panted. Terror coiled in your gut. You had to get out, you were running out of time, he'd find you, he'd--
Then, the Spectre's head bowed forwards, and a single deep, rusty sob left him; the hook of his nose and his bonesharp profile projected upon the screen in stark shadow. His shoulders heaved, and he wept great, wracking sobs, and your shoulders slumped, and your heart broke. For a monster. Why?
"I can't...can't keep doing this," he despaired, begging to nobody at all. "I can't...I can't...please--"
His head remained bowed over the corpse, and he snapped, tossing his gavel away with a cry of anguish-- only for it to reappear in his hand, a moment later. He threw it again, and again, and again-- it came back, and back, and back. Eventually, burying his face in his hands, he buckled over, weeping like a child, like a boy--
You moved towards him without conscious thought. Your foot slipped upon the steps, and a clank! set your teeth on edge. A rancid can of beer clattered down them, spilling its contents along the way.
The Spectre stopped weeping immediately. He sniffed, and stood up, his voice thick and gravelly as he snarled.
"Who's there?"
You did not answer. You clapped your hand over your mouth. Your heart squeezed. Your lungs tightened. Your vision went black at the edges. The Spectre spoke again, creeping ever closer to the edge of the screen.
"Ah," he whispered, low and slow. "Ahhh...it's you, isn't it?" Your face crumpled. A sob left you, outside of your control. His voice softened again; almost kind. "Don't you want to just...stay? Don't you want to stop running? Don't you want this to be over?"
You began to back up the cinema's stairs. Your legs could barely hold you. Your blood was cold, viscous, but heat pooled in your belly and thighs with the intimacy of his grim invitation; a gross contradiction.
"I could make this be over for you," the Spectre whispered, finally appearing around the edge of the screen, with wet red hands, and cold tired eyes, and tears still fresh upon his cheeks. "I could make it quick. Painless, if you wanted. Stay."
Another sob left you, tears pouring down your cheeks, shaking your head and beseeching him with your eyes. He stiffened. His face twisted, too; all storm and fury and despair.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" he growled. "Stop it, you deser-- why are you looking at me like that?"
You gasped. You snapped to action. You ran, slamming through the double doors, and the Spectre sprinted, hot on your tail.
"Don't you dare-- hey!"
Hiromi slammed through the doors after you, and you were...gone. Vanished. Like a ghost. Just like before.
The cinema plaza was empty. Popcorn staled in its glass cabinets. A ticket machine churned, vomiting blank tickets out to coil upon the floor. Lakes of spilled soda formed strange neon rainbows. Fluorescent lights blinked overhead. Wet footprints disappeared mid-step, halfway along the carpet.
And Hiromi buried his hands in his hair, and doubled over, and howled.
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Hiromi's dreams were not dreams; but nightmares.
Vivid flashes of red. Hot rage. Terrible grief. The screams of injustice, pounding on glass. Your body writhing beneath his, ripe for the kill, and how he would take you, first, with your thighs forced open and your eyes wet and wide and beautiful and your sobs in his ears and your sweet cries into his mouth as he drank you down and his pleasure dragged within you and your warmth enveloping him just as the cold did--
Hiromi woke up with a harsh, ratchet gasp. Disgust rose from his belly to his chest, hot and thick like bile, vomiting out of him. His horror clung to his skin, and he cried out, skittering to his feet in the alleyway, ripping off his suit jacket, and his tie too tight and his shirt, if only he could rip off his flesh, too, monster, monster--
He spun. He staggered. He buried his hands in his hair, and slammed into the brick, and broke.
"Get out of my HEAD!" he roared into the wall, his palms and his forehead forced flat against them.
His bellow echoed out through the night. Everything seemed to fall silent. The stars watched on. Even low-grade Curses, skittering and warbling, peeked their heads over window boxes and wooden stalls; an uncanny audience. Unwelcome. Like you. Hiromi breathed hard, panting, shaking, sweating cold sweat and cold and shirtless and begging. "Get out...get out..."
Hiromi stood like this, grazing his palms and forehead upon the wall, for countless minutes; maybe hours. Why did you plague him, so? Why did you press against the glass, when none of the others did before you?
Finally, the bilious rage faded and the curtain fell again. Ice frosted the glass. Numbness was a cold blanket.
Flat-faced and staring into nothingness, Hiromi picked up his shirt, and buttoned it up, and picked up his tie, and tied it on, and picked up his suit jacket, and shrugged it on, as robotic as if he was getting ready for work, and by the time he was fully dressed again, he had made up his mind.
He did not know why you haunted him so, but you did. You were the problem. Your constant evasion of what was right and just was the problem.
And you had to be exorcised. Like the curse you were.
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Your name is Higuruma Hiromi. You are a criminal defence lawyer. You are thirty-six years old. Your name is Higuruma Hiromi. You are a criminal defence lawyer. You are thirty-six years old. Your name is Higuruma Hiromi SCUM. You are a criminal defence lawyer MURDERER. You are
You turned over the scrap of paper in your hand. It had fluttered on the wind from his pocket, one day; when you had been hidden in plain sight, as though it had intended to find you. It was scrawled so hard, in places, that the pen had ripped through the paper, and with the bloody finger smudges that accompanied the grim affirmations, the paper had been reduced to a fragile, raggedy mess.
The Spectre-- the man, Hiromi-- could be reasoned with, you told yourself; even as the madness on the paper threatened to seep through your fingers. The mercurial instability that this dropped artefact evidenced, however, made such thoughts of diplomacy a wretched prospect indeed.
It would be no quest for the faint of heart; nor for the impoverished of character.
Thankfully, that was not you.
You brushed off your thighs, and were about to stand to step towards the gallows, when you heard him. A roar into the night; a roar of the most ghastly, agonised, and soul-splitting fury that you had ever heard.
You felt vomit rising in your throat again. All your surefootedness left you at once. You clapped your hand over your mouth, stumbling back over gravel, the remains of people and buildings. He was close. You could tell; he was close. You stared down the long, higgledy-piggledy remains of the city street, with its buckled buildings and overturned cars and bent street lamps.
And at the end of the street, the street lamps began to flicker. They flickered, and flashed, and cracked, and exploded in a shower of sparks, and died; one by one, from the end of the street, towards you, one, by one, by one--
You were left in near darkness. Bells tolled in your mind. You couldn't think; couldn't move.
The streetlight that had died first, at the far end, flickered on just once more (without a bulb, impossible, unreal)--
Just long enough to illuminate a familiar silhouette; a tall, black spectre with a gavel and a slouch.
The light went out.
The light came back on.
The figure was gone.
Then that distant light, and those above you, all flickered out at once.
The carriage stopped. Death had kindly waited. The door swung open, and a bloodless white hand reached out towards you through the dark.
He did not give you a chance to run, this time. The Spectre-- Hiromi Hiromi Hiromi-- appeared before you with impossible speed. As his face appeared above you, and the other, black-cloud, many-toothed, white-faced spectre appeared above him, your breath caught in your throat.
You could barely recall the struggle and scrap; he had called you a snake, and oh, how you had crawled away on your belly. But it was never enough. His hands always found you again. You kicked, bit, scratched, fought, and he took every hit with grunts and curses, so much stronger than you.
By the time his hand had bruised your ankle for a second time, and you had been dragged back to be declared guilty, you knew for sure.
You were going to die.
You were going to die. You were going to die, going to die as he loomed above you, going to die as he raised his gavel, going to die as you saw the last flicker of hesitation fade behind his eyes--
"Hiromi! Stop!" you cried, leaning back on one bleeding elbow, and raising the other hand in surrender. The Spectre, now named, froze. His eyes flickered over your face in confusion, mistrust, guilt, rage, fear, rage, rage--
"You know my name," he croaked, his arm not lowering. "How do you know my name?"
Your breath hitched again. Your chance glimmered gold. You had never established a dialogue with him before. Your hands shook, but you managed to fumble the raggedy scrawled note out of your pocket. Hiromi went rigid, and the air thickened around you, and your voice wavered as you spoke.
"I--I understand-- you're not like this--"
"So you're a common pickpocket as well, are you?" he spat, turning his head aside with...shame? Disgust? Regardless, what burned within him was no controlled fire; its flames spread and belched in terrible and unpredictable ways. You walked on eggshells. You felt the tightrope wobble. You kept your voice measured.
"You dropped this--"
"How many times will you blame someone else, instead of yourself?" he snapped, dragging one hand down his face. The flames spread. The rain poured. Lightning flashed. His fury only built.
Sparks and shards of glass sprayed from the street lamp above you as it exploded again, and you felt the blood drain out of you. "How many times will you pretend you're not just like them?"
"Hiromi, plea--"
"Don't say my name!" he roared, and swung his gavel up with foul purpose again. And as he raised his gavel, and you began to close your eyes, unable to control your one pitiful cursed ability even if you wanted to, something appeared behind Hiromi in the dark.
A vast stop-motion creature, with a stop-motion warbling groan, all grey matter puce and putrid flora and--
"NO!"
"Get your filthy hands off me--"
A cloud of orange gas. A grapple-- a CRACK!
A brittle, rattling roar. The Curse, a behemoth gristle-worm, all viscera and vines, gawped its great mouth through the space where Hiromi once stood, and gulped down, down, down through the rubble. Its filthy tail flipped above ground once, twice, thrice-- before it disappeared entirely. It seemed to care very little about its missing meal. It left nothing behind but a cavernous hole, sprays of rotting foliage, greyrot slough, and the hanging orange mist.
Some thirty feet away, you coughed, and coughed. Sprawled on the street, with Hiromi braced against a wall and coughing beside you, you blinked owlishly down at your arm, and the strange orange pollenspray that covered it. You shook your arm. Some of the pollen fell off...no. No? Absorbing into the air. Dissipating into your skin? No...what is it? Hot. Clothes, itchy, hot.
“Good,” Hiromi spat, staggering against the wall with shaking orange-hued hands, and venom on his tongue. “Good– don't think that absolves you, though; I wanted you all to myself too, a death like that is too…too…”
“You're delusional,” you gasped. “You’re…you’re mad.”
“It’s because of you,” he spat again, fixing you with a look of such accusation, such disgust, that the heat and shame and guilt threatened to tear you in two. “It’s you, your– your lies, your little act– well I don't believe it for a second–”
You staggered to your feet, and your mind ran blank. Your mouth watered. A moan, low and filthy, broke free of you in a way that made Hiromi twitch; his eyes fixing wide upon you, his nostrils flaring. You felt a wave of heat hit you, as though you'd walked into a burning building; and by the way Hiromi breathed heavily behind you, you knew he felt the same.
When your belly began to ache, and you felt your pulse at the crest of your thighs, and your nipples grazing dimples against your shirt, and the undeniable urge to crawl back to Hiromi and taste the sweat off his skin, you knew you had to run. Trembling, and feeling terrible arousal dampening your underwear, you hazarded a single glance over your shoulder.
Higuruma Hiromi had gone completely still. Crouched over, with one spidery hand braced against the wall, he stared at you like a jaguar in the reeds. The rage that burned through him had met another fire; but they did not temper each other. Quite the opposite. His eyes flicked over you, charting your weak spots; eyes, face, breasts, belly, thighs, breasts, lips, thighs–
Your clit twitched. You staggered. And you stumbled. And you fled.
A growl of fury and the sound of thundering footsteps followed in your wake. The hunt began; unlike any predation he had subjected you to before.
You had never run so hard in your life. The alleyways were narrow, dirty and crumbled; with bins overturned and walls half-collapsed and rats and Curses that squeaked and skittered, furtive in the dark. Still, the rain fell. Still, it did not wash the rancid desire off of you; the impossible drive to stop running, and to let Hiromi consume you, mind, body and soul.
You throbbed at the promise of it; throbbed with the promise of how he would rip your clothes aside and wrench your thighs apart and press himself into your cunt, and soothe this dreadful ache with warm, salty balm.
“Please–” you begged, squealing as you narrowly dodged a snatching hand, millimetres from dragging you back by the ponytail. “I've never– I haven't– please–”
“Why are you– stand still– why are you–”
You turned a corner…and hit a dead end. The dead end. The end.
You had scarcely a second to process your impending death; but the force overtaking you that had been compelling you to stop, purred.
And Hiromi caught you, and grabbed you, and spun you back to slam against the brick wall. Your head hit the back of his hand. You saw stars. He towered over you, and glowered down at you, and when he trapped you with his knee between your thighs, your legs gave way, sitting you limp and supple and pinned between his arms.
With a final, hot flash of fight, you slapped him across the cheek. Hard.
Time stood still. Liquid fire pumped through your heart. The side of Hiromi’s face, sweaty and stubble-rasped, pressed against yours. You felt him tongue the inside of his stinging cheek, that squirming bulge pressing against your own cheek. It branded you. You shuddered. He panted in your ear; great, hungry, shaking breaths.
"Feel better?" he rumbled. "Does that feel good?" Warning bells sounded through the fog. Your heart had surely stopped beating.
"I-- I--"
"Do it again," he hissed, his voice so low that you could barely hear it. You sobbed, and cocked your hand back again, and slapped him again, and again, and again, each slap making him grunt, and groan, and press you against the wall harder.
Each slap was a log to the fire. You felt the twitch and strain of his cock against your belly. You knew that the haze, the need to fill and be filled to survive, had consumed him, too. It was a horrific playing field on which to be level.
Eventually you tired, panting, desperate; eventually, he spoke, low and breathless and agonised.
“Why are you haunting me like this?” he demanded of you, his nose and lips grazing embers over your throat even through his outrage. “Why can't I stop…why can't you stop…why won't you leave me alone?”
“You won't listen to me,” you sobbed, your hand finding his tie; betrayed by your own body which urged him ever closer until you could not tell where he ended and you began. “Won’t believe me. I keep…I keep telling you–”
“Lies,” he spat again, and your face crumpled as he swore and bit softly into your collarbone. “Lies, all of them, why would you be any different…why are you…you different, god, you taste…taste…”
His mouth found the sensitive junction of your neck and shoulders, tasting you against his better judgement, with a shiver and a moan. He could not think; overwhelmed by the wrongness, the rightness, how he could not think, could no longer see clearly–
“You want this, too– I– I think,” Hiromi groaned, reaching down to palm his rigid cock beneath his zipper, aching for any relief, anything. “Shouldn’t…should want you, but– but that thing, that– that thing– shit, need to get this poison out–”
He wasn't wrong; not that you were conscious of when you had made that decision, or whether or not you had even made it at all. But when you rocked your core against his knee, and the burst of pleasure that shuddered through you provided such blissful relief, you knew he was not wrong.
You did not even know when your hands had found his buttons, but the sinful rusty moan that spilled from his lips when your fingernails scraped over his chest was the final straw.
“Do you want this?” he demanded; such a curious question from a monster. His hand shook at the button of your jeans. His other snaked up, binding your wrists together and dragging them away from his body. You whimpered; denied, and he spat out curses again, slapping your hands to the wall above you in a swift small justice. “Do you want this?”
“I…I…unghhhhh, it hurts– Hiro–”
“Don't say my name like that.”
“Please–” you begged, your eyes tearing up and your core grinding mercilessly against his thigh. “P-please–”
“Don't look at me like that.”
A heavy pause; heavier breaths. Hiromi’s eyes, now dark and foggy and heavy lidded, hyperfocused on where your core had seeped, damp, straight through to his trousers. He ground his thigh up, his teeth burying into his lip as you moaned. When his eyes found yours again, they were flat, and cold, and his final words wracked one great sob from your body.
“This doesn't change anything.”
When his lips crashed to yours, and his hand ripped your jeans open to delve into your slick heat, you saw stars. The mewl that left you was unholy. Angels would have blushed. Hiromi growled at the feel of you; hypersensitive, hyperalert, able to smell everything, taste everything, twitching and spurting with the thought of a wet velvet glove around his cock.
When he found your clit and began to pinch and squeeze and massage around it in rough, desperate circles, you mewled again; but this time, in shock. You had not expected–
“What?” Hiromi spat, chuckling without mirth. “I’m a killer, sure– but I draw the line at fucking you with no regard to your pleasure– drag it out of you, if I have to– consider it a trial–”
You whimpered, squirming around such dreadful, overwhelming pleasure. You squirmed and clawed at his chest until he hissed, even as your body begged for release.
"Stop it-- hands off-- you need this--"
"Please-- please--" A squeak, high and godless, piercing the night. He clapped a hand over your mouth, gasping, panting, black-eyed with desire.
"Fuck, any other...any other day...sound so sweet-- hands off--"
You had to be manhandled towards an orgasm for your own good. Hiromi, at least, seemed to understand this; he hit and batted your clamping thighs apart to bully himself between them, and spat feathers the whole time.
“Come on,” he growled, mocking, nipping at your lower lip and dragging it between your teeth. “Too much? Not enough?” A pause; a sobbing whimper for an answer. “Fuck– not enough, fine then–”
Hiromi released your bound hands, and tore your jeans and underwear aside between the seams, and plunged two fingers inside you without ceremony. His other hand did the same to your shirt, releasing a breast for him to latch onto with a low moan.
The fire burned hot. You buried your hands into his hair, drunk off the smell and feel of him, bucking your hips forwards to take his fingers deeper. Pleasure built fast. You vaguely heard the clinking of a belt; the shuffle, tug and groan of a hand jacking a man off while you twitched and clamped around his other fingers.
“F-fuck– yes– come on– come on– unnnhhhfffuck–”
Hiromi came first, and he did so with his head tipped pain, and the rain tumbling onto his face and chest and cock, and euphoric twitches of bliss. You felt thick spurts of his cum splattering to your pussy and his hand, and being fingered inside you as he hooked and fucked and ground you away towards the edge. You were right, you thought– your last conscious thought before agonised oblivion; his spend was a balm.
Hiromi kept stroking himself through your orgasm, hazy-eyed and endearingly dopey and staring between your face (tearful with honeyed pain) and your cunt (twitching and milking around his cum-soaked fingers). He pulled his fingers out slowly, gazing at the glaze upon them, and wiping them on his lips and collar, to save the smell and taste of you for later.
The relief, while immediate, was horribly short-lasting. You felt that brittle, prickling need rising in you again, spreading from pussy to toes in single flat seconds. Hiromi leaned his head over your shoulder, breathing hard, and grinding one fist against the wall even as his other continued to stroke his still-rigid cock.
“No,” he growled, grinding his forehead against yours now, bitter displeasure crinkling the bridge of his nose. “No…fuck, no–”
“Hiromi, you've got to–”
“I'm not fucking you like an animal!” he raged, thudding his forehead against the wall over your shoulder in overwhelming, absolute madness. You flung your hand up on instinct, cushioning his forehead before the next blow. At first, he leaned into your touch with a whimper that nearly made you weep; before recoiling, disgusted, raging.
“I'm not fucking you like an animal,” he repeated, with rapidly dwindling conviction upon each repetition. “I'm not…I'm not fucking you like an animal…I'm not…”
Even as he spoke, he had lifted you against the wall. He had lifted you against the wall, with two wiry arms encircling your thighs, and the cumslick head of his cock nudging against your exposed core, and his nose swiping from left-to-right across yours.
“I'm not…I'm not fucking you like an animal,” he whispered against your lips, canting his hips forwards until just the tip of his cock sucked between your inner walls. He groaned, such a pitiful little whimper, into your open mouth.
He tried to stop his hips from bucking, instinctively chasing his pleasure. He couldn't. Not when you had fallen so pliant and submissive in his arms. “I'm not…not fucking…like an animal…leave– get out of my head–”
He couldn't hold back any longer. He plunged inside you with one rough groan, and a stretch that made lights pop behind your eyes.
Pleasure hit him like a hammer. He came again before the tip of his cock even kissed against your cervix. You felt the twitching shudder and flood; his ratchet, rasping orgasm, that filled you so deeply that your belly ached.
Whatever this Curse had done to you was so grotesque; so unearthly. You could have sworn you had dilated enough within, that had Hiromi pressed any harder, the tip of his cock would have popped through and continued its ejaculation right into your womb itself. But the thought didn't alarm you; it ignited you. Your legs tied behind Hiromi’s back and forced him deeper. The groan that left him was filthy. You kept him there, locked and spilling, mating like– like–
“Won't fuck you like an animal,” Hiromi begged, still exhaustedly rolling his hips, for his cock refused to soften. “I'm better than this…I used to be better–”
Hiromi thrust again; harder this time. The pleasure consumed you both, breathing each others’ breath, tasting each others’ blood, sweat and tears, inextricably tied by something that Hiromi had blinded himself to. You did not know if he was punishing you, or himself.
And his thrusts were punishing; hard, fast and slick, squelching between your walls and ramming into your deepest spots without slowing even once. Whatever terrible poison the Curse had imbued you both with was using Hiromi like a vessel; puppeteering his nerves and neurons until he was forced wildly past his limit. Until he was diminished completely. He spoke to himself, or you; begging, growling, raging.
“Fucking…monster– come again– not over, yet– again for me-- again–”
He reached down after bracing one of your thighs on his own, and pinched your clit until you howled, blinded by delicious pleasure.
Hiromi came again, and again, and again. You did not know where one peak ended and the other began, and simply clutched his lapels and let the fight and fog take you. Not once did you unlock your legs from behind his back.
It wasn't like you to let a man fuck you through his own catastrophic mental breakdown; but it was barely within your control, and your belly felt hungry for the stretch, and so there you kept Hiromi locked; trapped in a constant blurring cycle of lazy, exhausted ruts, and spine-tingling orgasms, until you both hung against each others’ bodies, limp and used for some foul purpose. Ruined. Sweaty. Aching. Wrecked.
The poison was fading. Your eyes were closed. The rain pattered a steady stream onto your face, washing the pleasure away. Your head leaned back against the wall, and his forehead leaned upon your decollete, and you felt his breaths slowing against the curve of your breasts.
Eventually, Hiromi shifted, grunting. You felt cold, empty, as he slid out of you with a shudder, leaving a steady drip of cum oozing from your pussy.
You felt colder still when he pressed his forehead against the brick wall beside your head, and spoke, his voice rough.
“Domain expansion: Deadly Sentencing.”
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Your body went numb. Your mind, still addled by drunken, stolen pleasure, went numb too.
When you sank to the floor, you did so with your eyes fixed upon the Spectre, who swayed on his own perch some metres away from you. He pushed his scattered, inky hair back with one shaking hand, and zipped his softening cock back inside its confines, and could not meet your eye.
And for the first time in this whole wretched hunt, this monstrous, unjust predation, you felt not terror; but incandescent rage. You burned with it; fuelled by it, and you dragged yourself up, and gripped the wooden stand before you, and opened your mouth to spit venom.
“I told you that wouldn't change anything,” the Spectre interrupted quickly, straightening his tie and fumbling around for something on his stand. His expression was unstable; mercurial, flicking between boyish confusion, guilt and shame, and the same coldflame fury you had come to know best from him. His companion, an enormous, whitemasked black cloud who was just as blinded as the Spectre, hovered impassively behind him.
The Spectre spoke again, his voice growing louder, growing in confidence. “You are charged with–”
“What?” you spat, shuddering to feel the cramps in your full, aching belly. “Charged with what, exactly?”
A pause, mulish. “If you would allow me to finish–”
“Fuck you.”
“--or you will be held in contempt of court.”
“Fuck your court! And fuck your justice, you pig–”
“You are charged with–with...”
A pause. Something shifted in the courtroom. The Spectre paled, and spun towards his creature, his face twisted in denial. Though eyeless, the whitemask face seemed to turn its eyes towards the Spectre, too. As if hearing something that you could not, the Spectre shook his head, backing off and stumbling.
“No…no–”
Finally, he understood. Understanding was a terrible thing. The glass smashed. Hell broke through.
“You've got nothing, have you?” you sniped. The Spectre’s eyes widened. His hands still fumbled over his empty stand. Your hand slid across your own; and across a brown manila, that had appeared upon it, neatly tied with fine red string. The gift of vindication. Just for you.
"Shall we look at you, instead?"
“No…” the Spectre bargained, his hands raking down his face as his eyes widened in horror. The courtroom began to crumble around him; great chunks of painted image cracking away in a dome, and falling down to the floor around you;
Tok-tok-tok-tok-tok-tok-tok-TOK-TOK-TOK–
“No!” he snarled as you raised the file before you, and the creature that hovered behind him turned its gaze completely, and moved, slowly, to hover behind you instead. “No! You’re just like them! Just like all the others! Just like–”
“Just like you?” you offered, flat and cold. The Spectre froze…and then, crumbled like the room crumbled around him.
The mask of the hunter fell away. The man- Hiromi- was left behind, and he stared back at you; at the brutal reflection of the ideals he had abandoned in his quest for righteousness. The savage reminder of the blind cynicism that he had embraced in the quest for justice, and fairness.
And you pitied him. As his frightening companion abandoned him, you pitied him. As he dropped his gavel to the alleyway floor, staring at the ghosts of blood on his hands, you pitied him. And as the last vestiges of his domain tok-tok-tok’d away, you pitied him.
The rain had slowed. When you looked at him again, from his spot kneeling in repentance before you, your face crumpled. You could not stop the tears from falling. You were tired of this. Tired of being hunted. Tired of empathy for the ugly and the weak.
“I'm…I'm so sorry,” Hiromi croaked, staring into the empty void as if hoping it would swallow him whole. “I never…I didn't…I would never…”
“Just leave me alone,” you whispered, your voice breaking. “Or get it over with.”
He looked up at you, at that; exhausted, drawn, still rumpled by the terrible pleasure that now haunted him. “'Get it over…'--I'm not going to kill you!” he cried, horrified.
You raised one cynical eyebrow at him. It only deepened his horror. He rose on unsteady legs, and scooped up his gavel, and turned his back on you. He hesitated, whispering just once more before he walked away.
“I really am. I’m so sorry.”
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
You festered alone in the dark. Nobody hunted you. Nobody tried to find you. You hid; for it was all you could do in this nasty game. Your grace period was almost up. You accepted that a death in insignificance was better than a life won by blood.
Such was your loneliness, that you almost began to miss your Spectre; the ghost upon your shoulder. You were no longer haunted by his loathing. But you were haunted by his horror; by his apology, so devastatingly given and so harshly rebuffed, that you wondered, with no small degree of fear, if he had even survived the revelation of the depths of his own depravity at all. You pictured him, with a noose or a knife and it filled your belly with stones. It was a thought you could not entertain.
If the only one who noticed your existence was the monster who hunted you, even that small dignity was better than a death in insignificance. Surely. And if he could walk towards even a chance of forgiveness, perhaps you could both be saved.
You rose, shaky with hunger and exhaustion. You only had a few days left. You would find him, you told yourself as you limped off into the night; dead or alive.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
You had a guardian angel. You did not know why it had taken you so long to notice it.
Bodies laid in your wake like grisly breadcrumbs, but you had not been the one to kill them. You felt a ghost over their bodies; a familiar wooden TOK! somewhere in the vestiges of your mind.
It filled you with anxiety. It filled you with hope. It filled you with dread. It filled you with the memory of a desperate embrace; of a Spectre buried inside you and begging for release.
Hiromi found you before you found him.
You had retraced your footsteps without conscious thought, to the narrow residential street where you had shared your crisps with a hungry raccoon dog. The evening was setting in, and it smelled of the sweet mid-autumn.
The street lamps were just blinking to life when you spotted him; even more ragged and rumpled than when you'd last seen him, crouching on his haunches with his back pressed to the streetlight and a packet of crisps hanging from his dangling hand. He wiggled his fingers at the nearby tanuki, his hooked nose crinkled with his smile.
Something had changed in him.
You froze. He looked up. His eyes widened as he saw you, and he stood up fast; but then stalled, holding his palms up in surrender as you flinched.
“Whoah!” he said, his face softer now, without the harsh lines of loathing. “Whoah, hey hey hey…I just want to talk to you.”
Your eyes narrowed. Any determination that you had had to find him, had quickly been replaced by the flesh-memory of fear. Hiromi breathed fast, his eyes still wide. Without breaking his gaze, he opened the packet of crisps, and crouched down, and held them out. He gave them a shake.
“Come on, now,” he cooed. “Come on…pspspspsps— hahaha– OH! NO! No wait–” A half hysterical laugh, a scuffle to catch up to you as you turned on your heel and stomped away. “--no no no– please, I'm sorry– I'm sorry, that was rude–”
“You should watch yourself!” you sniped weakly, your cheeks hot with anger, relief, ridiculously misplaced fondness. “I know things about you– horrible things– I know that you whimper!”
Hiromi’s awkward laughter died, and he cleared his throat, and rubbed the back of his neck. The guilt, the shame, the self-loathing: all were there, still present in those dark, hangdog eyes. But so was hope. So was humanity.
He stepped ever closer, sensitive to your rightful hesitation, until the backs of his fingers ghosted against yours.
“We…we have some things to talk about, I think,” he whispered, the sun setting past the houses behind him, igniting the back of his head in orange and gold. “You still have more to say.”
“About what?” you asked, your throat thickening and your arms closing around yourself. His head dipped, looking at you from beneath his brow.
“Anything. Everything. Anything you'll give me. I need to...to remind myself who I was-- am. And I owe you and– and myself, the dignity of hearing you. Seeing you. With both eyes open.”
"Are you going to pin me against the wall and whimper again?"
